NSA employee accused of leaking information sentenced to probation

- LIMITED DISSEMINATION

US/1

baltimoresun.com

By Tricia Bishop, The Baltimore Sun

9:12 PM EDT, July 15, 2011

Thomas Andrews Drake, the former NSA employee accused of felony espionage but convicted of a misdemeanor computer violation, was sentenced Friday in Baltimore's federal court to 240 hours of community service and one year's probation.

It was an abrupt end to a lengthy case that became a rallying point for both free-speech advocates and those seeking to plug media leaks. It had also threatened to imprison Drake, who was accused of retaining classified information to give to a Baltimore Sun reporter, for up to 35 years before a surprising plea deal was struck on the eve of trial last month.

This has been "an extraordinarily difficult ordeal for me, and [it caused] tremendous pain [for] my family and friends and colleagues," Drake, 54, told the court in a quiet voice.

In delivering the sentence, U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett had harsh words for the government, calling it "unconscionable" that Drake and his family were dragged through "four years of hell" only to have prosecutors ultimately back down on all felony charges. 

He refused to impose a fine on Drake and warned the Justice Department that if the evidence doesn't support the charges, prosecutors need to act swiftly in making amends. 

"What kind of message is sent by the government when the government dismisses a 10-count indictment?" Bennett asked. "If the executive branch of the government doesn't provide an explanation, it's up to the judicial branch to note the impropriety of it."

After the sentencing, Drake said he was tired and looking forward to rebuilding his life. "I paid a very high price as a public servant for choosing my conscience over my career and blowing the whistle on government wrongdoing," he said. 

FBI agents searched his Glenwood home in November 2007, but he wasn't indicted — on 10 charges of retaining classified information, obstruction of justice and making false statements — until April 2010. Then, days before his scheduled June 13 trial, prosecutors offered him a chance to plead guilty to "exceeding the authorized use of a computer," a misdemeanor.

Drake was never charged with leaking, though it was a constant subtext to his criminal case, which came to symbolize an increasing government intolerance toward the disclosure of unauthorized information. 

Five alleged leakers have been pursued under the Espionage Act by President Barack Obama's Justice Department — more than all previous administrations combined, though two cases, including Drake's, were carried over from the Bush years.

Drake's case was built on a "house of cards, and it collapsed beneath the weight of truth," Jesselyn Radack, an attorney and director at the Government Accountability Project, which advocates for whistle-blowers, said after the sentencing. 

She and others fought for Drake's freedom through a media campaign that included interviews with The New Yorker and "60 Minutes" and the circulation of grass-roots petitions, along with a contingent of bloggers who repeatedly called the charges against Drake a stretch. 

While prosecutors described Drake as ego-driven, he was often portrayed by sympathizers as an honest, patriotic man, and even won a $10,000 Ridenhour prize in April for truth-telling.

Court documents filed by his federal public defenders, Jim Wyda and Deborah Boardman, claim that Drake believed he was protecting his country when he told The Sun reporter — identified in court documents as Siobhan Gorman, who now works for The Wall Street Journal — about allegedly wasteful programs at the Fort Meade intelligence agency. 

Gorman, who wrote a series of award-winning articles about NSA mismanagement and programmatic problems for The Sun in 2006 and 2007, declined to comment through a Journal spokeswoman. 

"In the end, I was just being an American who simply stood up as a public servant in defense of truth, justice and our Constitution," Drake said after the sentencing. 

The criminal case against him was his first "brush with the law," according to his attorneys, who described him in a 17-page sentencing memorandum as living an "exemplary life" dedicated to hard work in the public interest. 

Friends and family "herald his honesty and patriotism, and laud his commitment to family, citizenship and the ideals of the Constitution," the lawyers wrote.

Drake grew up in Texas and Vermont, where he attended the second and third grades in a one-room schoolhouse. 

He went to the Burr and Burton Academy in Manchester for high school, where his father, a World War II veteran, taught history. His mother was a secretary to author Pearl S. Buck.

A former Burr and Burton classmate described Drake in a letter to the editor, as a "quiet, kind and thoughtful guy." 

In 1979, when he was 22, Drake enlisted in the Air Force — the same military branch in which his father served — and took a special interest in German, learning the language and becoming an Airborne Voice Processing Specialist, who translated and analyzed intercepted communications.

He and his young family were stationed in England during the early 1980s, and moved to Arizona in 1985, where he flew on electronic warfare missions. His service evaluations call Drake an "outstanding airman" with "unlimited potential." He is called "mature and capable," "directly responsible for [his] unit's success," and was selected as an instructor of the year. 

A fellow German linguist, who has known Drake for 20 years, said in a letter to the court that Drake was "the straightest arrow I have ever known," who's never even tried marijuana. "He follows the rules," the man wrote. 

Drake earned several degrees while enlisted, including a bachelor's degree from the University of Maryland, Europe. He was honorably discharged in 1989. He and his family moved to the Washington area, where he worked for several consulting firms and defense contractors, primarily dealing with government NSA contracts, and the U.S. Navy Reserves. 

In late 2001, Drake began working for the NSA directly as a senior executive in signals intelligence. 

 

"Tom chose to work for the government because he felt that it was the best way he could make a positive difference," a former NSA colleague wrote in a letter to the court. 

Drake held a Top Secret security clearance and worked at NSA's Fort Meade location until the summer of 2006, when he took a teaching assignment at the National Defense University. He stayed there until late November 2007, when the NSA suspended his security clearance. 

According to the indictment against him, Drake had already reached out to Gorman by then, saying he was referred to her by "someone we both knew" — identified in court documents as former congressional staffer Diane Roark, who once had NSA oversight while working for the House Permanent Selection Committee on Intelligence. 

In a court document filed this week, prosecutors claim that Drake was obsessed with Roark, who retired in 2002, and had been feeding her information since 1999. He agreed to talk to Gorman to impress Roark, they claimed. 

Roark could not be reached for comment Friday, and Drake declined to discuss the government's allegations after the sentencing. 

The case against him started to unravel in the week before the June 13 trial date, when prosecutors chose to withdraw certain classified exhibits. Drake pleaded guilty to the much lesser charge of unauthorized computer use on June 10.

"What he pled to is really theft," prosecutor William M. Welch II said in court, asking that Drake be forced to pay a $50,000 fine along with probation and community service. 

But Judge Bennett said the financial toll has already been severe. 

Bennett chastised him for exercising poor judgment and being careless, and ordered Drake to perform his community service at Fort Detrick in Frederick. He commended all attorneys, particularly the public defenders, and again voiced concerns about the duration of the case.

Afterward, Drake said he would have more to say about the ordeal in the months to come. 

"I now look forward to getting my life back, so I can live free again knowing that freedom is never free," he said. "It requires eternal vigilance." 

tricia.bishop@baltsun.com
CONTINUE READING Full Story HERE... 
www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-thomas-drake-sentencing-20110715,0,7628749.story

 

UK Spy Agency Cleared Iraqi WMD Intel Under Pressure

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BlackNETIC; US/1; ATTN: RT/66; US/121; JAG/1

British Spy Agency Officials Said In New Report

Friday, July 15, 2011

 

Officials with the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service in newly released testimony said the drive to substantiate statements on prewar Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction contributed to their organization's failure to flag faulty intelligence on the matter, the London Guardian reported on Friday (see GSN, June 27).

In a now widely discredited 2002 dossier, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair asserted that Saddam Hussein's regime had a significant WMD capability. However, no signs of active unconventional weapons programs or operational stockpiles have turned up in Iraq in the years following the 2003 invasion.

A "very febrile atmosphere" pervaded the agency known popularly as MI6, leading to the inappropriate approval of intelligence eventually determined to lack credibility, one unidentified SAS official told the expert inquiry investigating British participation in the Iraq War.

"The pressure to generate results, I fear, did lead to the cutting of corners. I think perhaps SIS (MI6) was at that point guilty of flying a bit too close to the sun," the official told inquiry member Roderic Lyne.

Addressing whether the intelligence service had assumed an inappropriate role in determining policy, the official said: "Not exactly policy-making as such, but perilously close to it, I would say. I think a fair criticism would be that we were probably too eager to please."

"It soon became an issue that there was a public portrayal, if you like, of senior intelligence officers, a public portrayal of them as Whitehall courtiers, and I think that was damaging externally in relation to the reputation of (MI6) for professionalism, and … the service's own sense of intellectual integrity," the insider added.

A second official backed former Blair security and intelligence adviser David Omand's previous assertion that the intelligence service "overpromised and underdelivered."

"I absolutely agreed with that judgment. It's precisely what we did," the official said.

An assertion that Hussein regime could deploy chemical armaments within 45 minutes was proven false no later than four months after the war began, one witness said.

The assertion was "based in part on wishful thinking," another SIS official said. "I think we marketed that intelligence ... before it was fully validated."

"Doubts" existed "in SIS's collective consciousness even before March 2003," when the military offensive started.

Former Blair Communications Director Alastair Campbell on Thursday responded via Twitter: "No such views [were] expressed to me by senior SIS personnel at [the] time" (Richard Norton-Taylor, London Guardian, July 15).

http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20110715_3498.php

[Information contained in BKNT E-mail is considered Attorney-Client and Attorney Work Product privileged, copyrighted and confidential. Views that may be expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of any government, agency, or news organization.]

Osama Raid Demonstrates PAKISTAN Nuke TERROR Threat as Seen by Federation of Scientists: Report

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US/1; ATTN: StandUpAmerica

Think Tank Identifies Growing Terrorist Threat to Pakistan's Nuke Arsenal

 

By: Anthony Kimery

06/30/2011 ( 8:37am)

A new Federation of American Scientists (FAS) report released Wednesday stated that “the greatest threat to Pakistan's nuclear infrastructure comes from jihadists both inside Pakistan and South and Central Asia.”

The report, Anatomizing Non-State Threats to Pakistan’s Nuclear Infrastructure, stated that “while there is appreciation of this danger, there are few substantive studies that identify and explore specific groups motivated and potentially capable of acquiring Pakistani nuclear weapons and/or fissile materials.”

FAS said its new “report fills that gap by exploring the Pakistani Neo-Taliban (PNT) and the groups that fill its ranks.”

Prepared by Charles Blair, director of the group’s Terrorism Analysis Project, and Hans Kristensen, director of its Nuclear Information Project, discusses why the Pakistani Neo-Taliban is the most worrisome terrorist group that’s capable of acquiring nuclear weapons. The report detailed new numbers for Pakistan's nuclear stockpile and developments in Pakistan’s production of fissile materials.

“The discovery and subsequent killing of [O]sama Bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, raises several troubling questions,” the new FAS report stated, adding that “with regard to the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, commentators note the US’ airborne raid on Bin Laden’s compound - undetected by radars in Pakistan, the world’s fifth largest military power - lends credence to the belief that state actors might be capable of successfully seizing and exfiltrating Pakistan’s nuclear assets.”

“As serious a security breach as the raid may have been,” the report stated, “of far greater importance is what it reveals about Pakistan’s nuclear insecurities with regard to non-state actors.  Indeed, while much attention has rightfully refocused on senior components of Pakistan’s military that aid and abet the Afghan Taliban, elements of Al Qaeda, and other jihadist groups that actively oppose the US, recent events are also a strong reminder that Pakistan is in the midst of a civil war against many of these same forces.”

“While it is likely that some senior Pakistani officials were aware of Bin Laden’s location in Abbottabad prior to the US assault,” the FAS report continued, “one should not entirely dismiss the recent comments of Prime Minister [Syed Yusuf Raza] Gilani, especially those in which he notes Pakistan’s own war against terrorism has cost it ‘some 30,000 men, women, and children and more than 5,000 armed forces personnel [and] billions of dollars lost as economic costs.’”

The FAS report stated “Pakistan may well be attempting to play all sides with its Janus-faced policies. Yet Pakistani leaders believe its policies - costly as they may be - are in harmony with their primary goals of blunting Indian influence in Central Asia and ensuring that the geopolitical endgame in Afghanistan conforms to their perceived interests.”

“Fully aware that the US will likely not remain in Afghanistan until it is favorably stabilized, and apprehensive that the power-vacuum left by a US withdrawal will invite meddling by Iran and India,” the report explained, “from late 2001 onward Pakistan’s military viewed the Taliban as a tool held in reserve, one that could blunt and counter Indian influence in Central Asia, generally, and offset mounting Indian influence in Kabul, specifically.”

“For example,” the report noted, “during the early post-9/11 era, Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) not only passively allowed the Afghan Taliban and its jihadist allies to fortify their position in Pakistan’s Waziristan Agencies, but implemented specific plans ‘to create a broad Talibanized belt in its [Federally Administered Tribal Areas – FATA] that would keep the pressure on [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai to bend to Pakistani wishes, keep US forces under threat while maintaining their dependence on Pakistani goodwill, and create a buffer zone between Afghan and Pakistani Pashtuns.’ Ahmed Rashid has summarized the ISI’s perception of this post-2001 Pakistani strategy as one that would ensure ‘a Talibanized Pashtun population along the border [that] would pose a threat to Karzai and the Americans but no threat to Pakistan, which would be in control of them.’”

But, the report said, “Pakistan gravely miscalculated in this regard. For four primary reasons Pakistan’s Talibanized Pashtuns and their allies - collectively referred to in [the] report as the Pakistani Neo-Taliban (PNT) - challenge not only the US-led coalition in Afghanistan, but also pose a distinct threat to Pakistan’s nuclear infrastructure; indeed, in the words of Gen. David Petraeus, the PNT is now a ‘threat to the very existence of Pakistan … supplanting even India.’”

“Pakistan’s first miscalculation - shared by the US - was a failure to foresee the violent revolt in its tribal areas as a result of the Pakistani military’s unprecedented incursion into FATA,” the FAS report continued, pointing out that “this military campaign - halfheartedly advanced by Pakistani forces against Al Qaeda after the latter escaped from Tora Bora in December 2001- was irresolutely advanced only at the insistence of the US and the latter’s concomitant and intertwined promise of generous military aid packages. As armed engagements increased, local tribal leaders in FATA came to believe that Pakistan was allowing US forces to operate unfettered within Pakistan.

“Fearing subjugation by a US-Pakistani cabal, it was only a matter of time before FATA’s tribal chieftains organized their own militias and began to battle Pakistani forces - the civil war had begun.”

The report goes on to identify and discuss in-depth three other important factors that gave rise to the threat that jihadist Taliban forces pose to Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.

http://www.hstoday.us/industry-news/general/single-article/think-tank-identifies-growing-terrorist-threat-to-pakistan-s-nuke-arsenal/fe783a7a7840425e61856a35e589fb3e.html

[Information contained in BKNT E-mail is considered Attorney-Client and Attorney Work Product privileged, copyrighted and confidential. Views that may be expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of any government, agency, or news organization.]

Congrressman confirms BlackNET Report on al-Qaida threat to Drone Makers; FBI Taking Weeks to Brief Targets

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ATTN: HST/2; HST/1; NSNS/1; US/30; Mil.COM-Ed.; IMF/2; LAT/4; WDN; OCR

FROM: W. Scott Malone, Editor - BlackNET.Intelligence.Channel

[ed.note: Too bad we don’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore--over the “NEW” Pentagon Papers leak, previously referenced.

Below, Nixon’s home town newspaper reports that executives of the local drone manufacturer  AeroVironment Inc., who were specifically named on a new Al Qaeda Assassination HIT LIST were NOT briefed by the FBI until this past THURSDAY, 30 June—THREE-WEEKS after THREE federal and ONE state AGENCY issued restricted intelligence Security BULLETINs which listed the California defense contractors by name. (DHS, DoD, FBI and CFIX.)

The Bureau briefing came ONE WEEK after an EXCLUSIVE Homeland Security Today and BlackNET Intelligence Channel joint report that detailed the 58-name ‘Law Enforcement Sensitive’ Al Qaeda assassination target list, with specific reference to the AeroVironment officials by name.

As reported Friday in a BKNT-NODIS Post,* certain other AQ Assassination Hit-List TARGETs also had NOT received FBI warnings until after being contacted by BlackNET investigators.

 In one particular case, the FBI failed to warn a prominent public figure about being targeted with AQ Death Threats until TWO weeks after the FOUR AGENCY Security BULLETINs were issued. These accumulatingly delayed warnings appear to fly in the face of various PUBLIC PROCLAMATIONS to the effect that the Al Qaeda Hit List Targets had been notified by the Bureau.

Most hit-list TARGETs who responded in any way when contacted by BlackNET investigators, told us it was the first they’d heard of the death threats:  “We learned about it from you,” said one high-profile assassination target. “The FBI then called right after that.” **

Go figure.

 (*- 01 July 2011 : 1800 ET – NO DISSEMINATION :: BKNT--FLASH--Exclusive BlackNET Member Threat PROFILE--Coming to a BlackNET BlackSITE near You--SOON--ND-HpR;

 **- Interview, 23 June 2011 : 1530 ET)] 

By Frank C. Girardot, Staff Writer

Posted: 07/01/2011 04:56:13 PM PDT

FBI officials warned AeroVironment Inc. employees of threats to 11 senior executives by Al-Qaida in Monrovia on Friday, July 1, 2011. 

MONROVIA - Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena, confirmed Friday that AeroVironment and senior executives of the West Huntington Drive company appeared on an al-Qaida hit list in June. 

The FBI has launched a probe into the threat and continues to investigate, Schiff said.
"There is currently no evidence that an attack is about to happen or even being extensively planned against local businesses or individuals," Schiff said in a statement released Friday afternoon. 

Schiff indicated the threat may be linked to recent developments in the Middle East including the death of terror kingpin Osama bin-Laden and street protests in Egypt, Syria and Tunisia.
"Al-Qaida has been trying to re-affirm its credibility after being marginalized by the Arab Spring," Schiff added. "Many thousands of these kind of threats have proved no more than idle rants over the years." 

Nonetheless, Monrovia city officials said Friday they've ramped up security around the AV plant in the 1800 block of West Huntington Drive. 

Officials also added additional security around the perimeter of the Friday Monrovia Family Festival and Farmers Market, City Councilman Tom Adams said. 

"There's all kinds of things going on," Adams said. "Police and security will have a huge presence. We're stepping it up." 

On Thursday FBI officials warned AV employees of the al-Qaida threats against 11 senior executives of the Monrovia-based company, according to sources with knowledge of the warning. 

The FBI warning came after jihadist blogs and websites urged attacks on U.S. military and corporate facilities in the United States. 

Those threats first surfaced in early June after a call to action from former Southern California resident Adam Gadahn, a high ranking al-Qaida member from Winchester in Southwestern Riverside County. 

Agents from the FBI field office in Los Angeles took part in talking to AV executives. Their briefing was based on a classified law enforcement bulletin published in mid-June, according to a source with knowledge of the bulletin. 

"The Bureau did contact individuals with AeroVironment, but said none of the information specifically named all of the individuals that were contacted," the source said.
An FBI spokeswoman declined to discuss the matter Friday. 

"We're not commenting on threats that come from websites," spokeswoman Ari Dekofsky said.
No tactical alerts had been issued by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in response to the threat, officials at the Temple City substation said Friday. 

The threat first came to light in a June 23 blog post on Homeland Security Today, a New York-based website that reports on counterterrorism, intelligence and border security. That post revealed extensive details about a bulletin released by the Florida Fusion Center on June 6.

 [NOT exactly ‘mid-June’]

The Fusion Center is a Florida-based partnership of federal, state and local law enforcement officers. 

According to the Homeland Security Today blog, the Fusion Center warned that "11 of the nation's top military leaders are among 58 past and present military, corporate and civilian officials who have been identified by members of the Al Qaeda-linked Ansar Al Mujahedeen jihadist forum as infidels who should be murdered, according to a jihadist `hit list."'
AV executives were also on that list. 

After their discussion with the FBI, company officials late Thursday removed all signage from the West Huntington Drive corporate headquarters. 

On Friday afternoon, police presence outside the plant was minimal.
Meanwhile local members of Congress said they were monitoring the situaiton. 

Schiff, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said AV's role in the war on terror likely played a role in the threats. 

"Many Southern California companies produce advanced technologies and products that play an important role in maintaining our national security, and we need to take every threat seriously. The businesses and individuals targeted by these sites have been notified and will take appropriate action to maintain their security." 

AV makes a variety of unmanned surveillance aircraft systems - known as drones - that are used extensively by U.S. military forces in the global war on terrorism. 

frank.girardot@sgvn.com
626-962-8811, ext. 4478
Read more: Schiff confirms al-Qaida threat to Monrovia plant - Whittier Daily News http://www.whittierdailynews.com/news/ci_18394500#ixzz1R17IODyv

[Information contained in BKNT E-mail is considered Attorney-Client and Attorney Work Product privileged, copyrighted and confidential. Views that may be expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of any government, agency, or news organization.]